Will I be understood even if I can't trill my "rr"s?
I will be in Latin american for about 10 days. I try awfully hard to trill my rrs but I just can't. Do you think I might be understood despite my ineptness?
7 Answers
Latin Americans are very kind! Sure you will be understood!
And by the way which part of Latin America will you be going to. I'm just learning there are at least 20 countries outside of the USA that speak Spanish! So I'm trying to learn the geography of the Spanish world; "el mundo español"!
Not being able to trill your 'r's will not cause you to be misunderstood, assuming that's the only 'fault' in your Spanish, it will just be heard as your 'accent'.
Even though you can't seem to do it now ,you soon will be able to. It is somehow easier for those of us that did not have english as a first language. Follow the exercises in the threads and you'll soon be trilling like a true spanish speaker.
I agree with everyone else here with the exception of possible misunderstandings using words that start with R such as Rueda, Ruis, etc. Also certain words could possibly be confused with others such as Perro, pero, pedo.
Other than a very few problematic words, you should have no problem.
Have a good trip!
I noticed while watching a film set in Patagonia, that one person (native speaker) pronounces the rr of 'perro' the same way that people from Argentina pronounce ll or y. The others all pronounced it the normal way, with trilled rr.
To explain, this sounds like the su in the middle of the English word pleasure. In the International Phonetic alphabet (IPA) it is written ?, and many of us will also know it as the way to pronounce the j of French je.
The speaker didn't have much to say, or I would have listened out for the same pronunciation in other words. I wonder if she had a speech impediment, or is this a known variation?
Here is a link to explain how she pronounced it
Just for fun, I'll add an exercise from hungarian "magyarul' to help with "rrrr"
"repa retek magyarul"
rrrepa ,rrretek magyarrrul"
the translation (for the curious (if I remember correctly is "carrots ,radishes, ,hungarian.
In my experience, people from the southern states in the US have the hardest time with learning accents and rolling their r's. However, I have heard many of them speak Spanish with the same drawl and accent as they have in English and Spanish speakers understand them.... probably because there is so much influence of American TV. I've had several folks say they learned English through the TV shows. Luckily a lot of it is censored! It may depend on where you are going too. If it is a tourist haunt, it will be easier since they are used to foreigners. The farther in you go, the more difficult it is if they have had limited access to hearing accented Spanish.
